The 20 Best Films Of 2015

The 20 Best Films Of 2015

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You hear “cinema is dead” constantly. You also hear that movies are exclusively focused on superheroes and teen dystopias, and anyone wanting anything else has turned to the "golden age of television." To which we say: bullshit.

It’s not that there aren’t problems with cinema right now, but anyone who says that there aren’t enough good movies didn’t see enough movies or was seeing the wrong ones. From the multiplex to the arthouse, from hugely expensive blockbusters to micro-budget indies shot with tools you probably have in your pocket, there’s an enormous breadth and depth of great film in 2015.

We’ve been celebrating the year in film for a few weeks now, and as we reach the midpoint, it felt like the right time to unveil our list of the Best Films Of 2015. Last year, for the first time, we conducted a poll of Playlist writers and staffers, collating their top tens (10 points for first place, 9 for second etc, plus a bonus point for every list a film was on) into a grand group Top 20.

Last year saw “Under The Skin” as our runaway winner, with “Birdman,” “Gone Girl,” “Foxcatcher” and “Nightcrawler” also making the Top 10. This year, we’d wager that our final list is a more interesting, surprising and, frankly, better line-up. How did it unfold? Take a look below.

A quick note about our year-end coverage: We, like you and everyone else, haven’t seen “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” yet. J.J. Abrams’ Mystery Box remains firmly closed until the week of release. As such, like the National Board of Review or the New York Film Critics Circle or any number of voting groups that are forced to make their decisions without seeing it, ‘The Force Awakens’ won’t be appearing on the bulk of these lists for now. Once it’s been reviewed, we’ll be discussing in the film full and will indicate where it would have featured on these best-of lists retroactively. Other late December releases such as “Joy,” “The Revenant” and “The Hateful Eight,” have already been seen by at least one staffer, and though they aren’t featured here, those films will likely pop up in individual staff lists we’ll be running later this month.

Coming-of-sexual-age stories in cinema are usually reserved for boys becoming men, but when such films focus on young women, there’s often either a fuzzy haze of romance or the harsh glare of judgment on its protagonist. Marielle Heller’s 1970s-set “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” is the rare film that deals frankly with its heroine’s experience of and appreciation for sex while never condemning her for her choices. At the film’s bursting heart is Minnie, played with wide eyes and a heady combination of maturity and naivete by Bel Powley. Despite being in her early 20s and British, Powley so perfectly captures Minnie’s San Francisco adolescent artist spirit that we’re eager to doubt the actress’s own biographical details. In addition to Powley’s breakout performance, “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” marks a bold entry into filmmaking for writer-director Heller. Based on Phoebe Gloeckner’s novel, the adaptation handles the book’s challenging subject matter —Minnie’s affair with much-older Monroe (Alexander Skarsgård), her mother’s boyfriend— with apparent ease. Beyond the strong screenplay, the film also incorporates animation from Sara Gunnarsdóttir throughout, a nod to both Minnie’s own cartoons and the original novel’s art. In other hands, “The Diary of a Teenage Girl” could feel like a standard period film about a young woman’s sexual and artistic awakening, but Heller and Powley have made this a vital experience filled with creativity and wonder. [Read our review]

19. “Creed”

It was perhaps inevitable that the seventh installment of a long-dormant franchise would end up making our top 20. The surprise, with “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” still under wraps, is that it turned out to be “Creed.” But if J.J. Abrams’ movie is even half as successful as reviving the ‘Star Wars’ milieu as Ryan Coogler’s was at giving new life to “Rocky,” we’ll be very lucky indeed. Focusing on Adonis (Michael B. Jordan), the son of Rocky Balboa’s former opponent and pal Apollo Creed, with Stallone’s veteran boxer moving into a role as the younger man’s mentor, the film delivers on the promise of Coogler’s debut “Fruitvale Station” and then some. It’s not that it reinvents the boxing genre —it’s hitting many of the same beats as many boxing movies since “Rocky” and beyond. But Coogler has such specificity in his writing (teamed with Aaron Covington) and such a clear idea of these characters and their journeys that it feels utterly fresh. And he shoots with a vitality (the one-shot boxing match has already passed into legend) that you need if you’re going to resurrect a dusty old war-horse like this. Not to rest on the kind of cliches that Coogler mostly avoids, but “Creed” packed an emotional punch like few other movies this year. [Read our review]

18. “The Assassin”

It’s been a long time coming for Hou Hsiao-Hsien’s new full-length feature film —over 7 years in fact, with the collective film world speculating each year whether that would be the one we see “The Assassin” grace screens. After 2014, hopes dwindled and it became an inside joke amongst the director’s fans. “Knock, knock. Who’s there? Not Hou.” But once it finally premiered in Cannes earlier in the year, the jokes quickly switched to chastened murmurs. The legendary Taiwanese master’s new martial arts film befits his reputation for meticulous mise-en-scene, methodical pace and liquid camera movement. Running just under two hours, the film tells the story of Nie Yinniang (the mesmerizing Hou regular Qi Shu) and her internal struggle between following her assassin’s instincts and following her heart. There’s no space to write about the narrative in the detail it warrants here, but Hou’s methods —synced with cinematographer Mark Lee Ping Bing and production designer Wen-Ying Huang— turn the aesthetics into the story. Even while working within the confines of the traditional wuxia genre, “The Assassin” stands apart as wholly transcendental. No book, painting, or piece of music can truly replicate the kind of purity this film manages to miraculously achieve. The hazy narrative is very much part of the film’s philosophy; it is as liberated from convention as nature itself. Through phenomenal craftsmanship, scenes melt into one another and transport us in a trance to another time and another place, dissolving humanity and the natural world into a singular condition. This is cinema, folks: pure and anything but simple. [Read our review]

“Mustang” is one of those little miracles: a film from a first time feature director that arrives fully-formed, distinct of style and vision and utterly fearless. It’s a lot like its protagonist, Lale —unwavering, clear-eyed, determined. Loving the film is easy if you already agree with co-writer/director Deniz Gamze Ergüven’s argument against the repression and control of women and their sexuality. But she and co-writer Alice Winocur skillfully lay out the ridiculousness of the situation—namely, the frantic, grasping attempts at control, starting with the inciting incident that snowballs into paranoia and destruction. As a story, “Mustang” is really more of a fable, one not just for women but for any kind of extreme control or repression. Ergüven places the audience in the girls’ perspective, thus making us one of the sisters, with the camera following the herd, peering out of windows and doors. We’re on the same level, draped in the piles of lanky limbs and manes of hair. It makes it that much harder when one by one, the sisters are systematically ripped away, married off, their vibrant girlish spirits squashed into wifely duties. The youngest, Lale, observes everything as she clings to the window bars, wriggles out of the windows, fanning her own spark of defiance. In a year when some of the best films demonstrated the hypocrisy and ineffectiveness of the last gasps of ruling patriarchy, little Lale is right up there with Imperator Furiosa as a badass feminist heroine. Vive la resistance. [Read our review]

If you’re an aspiring filmmaker, sitting around on your ass waiting for someone to hand you money to make your feature is no longer good enough: Sean Baker took a hundred grand and a couple of iPhones and made one of the best movies of the year. The film received much of its acclaim thanks to its legitimately beautiful iPhone 5s photography, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the movie’s virtues, which back up what we suspected after “Starlet” —Baker’s one of the most interesting indie filmmakers working. Set over one long Christmas Eve night in L.A. (it’s a holiday classic in the making), the movie tracks Sin-Dee (Kitana Kiki Rodriguez) and Alexandra (Mya Taylor), as they set out to find Sin-Dee’s boyfriend (James Ransone), who’s allegedly been cheating on her while she was in prison. Given that both the central characters are trans women and sex workers, Baker makes them three dimensional while also not ignoring their identities, and the film feels far more progressive than, say, the leaden “The Danish Girl." But more than that, it’s a raucuous, restless blast, feeling closer to a sort of’ 70s sex farce, the spirit of Hal Ashby and Peter Bogdanovich running through it, than anything else. After a lean 88 minutes, you emerge rejuvenated and with a renewed hope for the future of film. [Read our review]

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15. “The Tribe”We need more bold, purely cinematic films like “The Tribe,” in which a shy boy arrives at a boarding school for the deaf and tries to find his place in the hierarchy of the school’s insular criminal community. Working in the mold of "difficult" Eastern European arthouse cinema, Ukrainian director Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy, in his debut feature, may give in to a certain level of monotone miserablism common in many films of its ilk, but it functions so well as a deeply allegorical, original piece of crime fiction that the overwhelming dread and grisly violence are simply inevitable, not forced or intended only to shock. Nothing can undo the intensely rigorous and stylish filmmaking on display in “The Tribe,” which plays like an even more disturbing combination of “City of God” and “Lord of the Flies.” The potentially gimmicky conceit —all dialogue is spoken through sign language with no subtitles— creates a unique, wholly cinematic world where the viewer’s perception of cinema is radically altered. Nearly all scenes play out in impeccably choreographed long takes, via a camera that rarely stops moving —its style is akin to Michael Haneke’s “Code Unknown” and features a similar foreboding, disquieting sense that things are going to end badly. Although its formalism is rigid, the film rises well above gimmickry to become a truly great, unique piece of cinema (and a very fine crime movie to boot), conjuring its own world, commenting on our own and giving the audience something that’s palpably new. [Read our review]

14. “The End Of The Tour” To be perfectly frank, it sounded like a joke, a sketch on “Portlandia” or something: a movie about beloved ’90s literary idol David Foster Wallace, starring Judd Apatow favorite Jason Segel. It’s kind of amazing that it even got financed. And yet “The End Of The Tour” turned out not be a joke: it turned out to be a smart, beautifully acted film that did justice to its subject, even if some believe that its subject would have been horrified that it existed. Based on David Lipsky’s memoirs of his time spent interviewing the writer for a Rolling Stone article, adapted by playwright Donald Marguiles and directed by James Ponsoldt (“The Spectacular Now”), the film works precisely because it never really sets out to be ‘a David Foster Wallace movie.’ You get real insight into the man, his work and his views on life, but Marguiles and Ponsoldt have used the source material (the dialogue is overwhelmingly from Lipsky’s transcripts) to make a great conversation movie, in the mold of Richard Linklater’s ‘Before’ films, that happens to feature the acclaimed novelist. It’s really a movie about jealousy, about male competitiveness and friendship and about the mind of an artist and the loneliness common to such pursuits. And thanks to Ponsoldt’s typically sensitive, finely honed direction and excellent performances from both Segel and Jesse Eisenberg, it works beautifully even if you’ve never heard of “Infinite Jest.” [Read our review]

13. “Anomalisa”

In a great interview recently, Charlie Kaufman expressed the problems he experiences getting his stories made. His latest film, co-directed by Duke Johnson, was famously co-funded through Kickstarter, and is the first Kaufman theatrical release in seven years. Once you see how brilliant it is, “Anomalisa” makes that disheartening question of “why can’t we have more Kaufman films!?” sink that much deeper into melancholia. As his first foray into stop motion animation, the film plays in an even more creatively stimulating sandbox than the writer-director’s previous projects; the kind that allows for Tom Noonan’s half-soothing-half-creepy vocal timbre to represent the collective banality that surrounds us. Featuring stellar voice work from David Thewlis, Jennifer Jason Leigh (what a great year for her) and Noonan, the story is an existential crisis by way of puppets, and it’s just as hilarious, depressing, stunning, emotionally intelligent and intellectually emotional as it sounds. Immaculately handcrafted and wholly immersive, the film turns Cincinnati into a vortex of mediocrity that sucks Thewlis’ Michael Stone in, until, in the midst of a rapid succession of crises, a beautiful anomaly emerges in Leigh’s Lisa. Scored with Carter Burwell’s trademark poignant soundtrack and boasting one of the year’s greatest screenplays (where are all the screenplay nods, people?), “Anomalisa” would justify a bottomless well of funds for Kaufman’s next project in a perfect world. But as the film so resonantly explains, this is an imperfect world we live in, one full of trivial shit. At least we can count our lucky stars that these imperfections can at times get the creative cogs turning to produce an unforgettable film. [Read our review]

An inspired, risky and unconventional biopic, "Steve Jobs" finds the unlikely team of author Aaron Sorkin and director Danny Boyle convene on a story of the late Apple impresario, and channeling the best of their abilities in symphonic unison to create dynamic electricity in a three act neo-Shakespearean drama. Through an 1984 ascension, a 1988 falter and a 1998-set reclamation, Boyle and Sorkin chart the imperiousness, arrogance and genius of this tech trailblazer. Arguably the true auteur of the movie, Sorkin’s witty, rapid-fire dialogue crackles and is made human by the herculean acting of Michael Fassbender —one gets the sense he had to wrestle the script into a chokehold and consume it. The terrific supporting cast of Kate Winslet, Seth Rogen, Jeff Daniels, Michael Stuhlbarg and Katherine Waterston, all working at the top of their game, make the movie radiate that much more. But perhaps the movie’s secret weapon is Boyle, who has spent a lifetime impelling visual propulsion, but instead here expertly channels the kineticism already on the page —an insightful and counter-intuitive move if there ever was one. An exhilarating and orchestrally-pitched drama about the cost of brilliance and an emotionally trenchant look at legacy and parenthood, “Steve Jobs” is an engrossing portrait of a relentlessly determined and dysfunctionally complicated tech titan. [Read our review]

11. “Ex Machina”

“The first great film of 2015,” we wrote in our review of “Ex Machina” back in January, when the film opened in the U.K. and that’s a risky claim. With literally hundreds of films still to open, you can look like a fool if December rolls around and everyone’s pretty much forgotten it. Fortunately, that’s not been the case with “Ex Machina,” the directorial debut of “28 Days Later” and “Sunshine” scribe Alex Garland, as taut, inventive and heady a sci-fi chamber piece as we’ve seen since “Moon.” Following a reclusive computer-genius billionaire (Oscar Isaac) enlisting the help of an employee (Domhnall Gleeson) to see if his new humanoid A.I. (Alicia Vikander) can pass for human, the film finds new life in the often-tired robot/singularity theme, thanks to airtight writing, three terrific performances (Isaac in particular stands out) and direction marked by a craft and confidence that belies Garland’s first-timer status. This film keeps you guessing as to exactly what it’s up to with every scene (no film was more carefully plotted this year), and reveals its true intentions only very late in the game. We can’t wait to see what Garland does for his next trick. [Read our review]

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The list of first-time filmmakers who’ve played in competition at Cannes is a short one, and the list of those that won prizes is even smaller. That László Nemes’ debut “Son Of Saul” won the Grand Prize on the Croisette certainly marks it out for attention, but those who haven’t seen it yet (it opens finally in the U.S. next week) probably aren’t yet prepared for the gut-punch power and masterful filmmaking on display from the Hungarian director (a former assistant to Bela Tarr). The tremendous Geza Rohrig plays an Auschwitz Sonderkommando, a Jewish prisoner forced into aiding the Nazis in the concentration camps, who discovers what he believes is the body of his estranged child in the gas chambers and sets out to give him a proper burial. Filmmakers have been grappling with the horrors of the Holocaust for 70 years now, but few such films have been as powerful as Nemes’, who uses long, Lubezkian takes and astonishing sound design to throw you into a vision of the camps that take on an almost heightened level of nightmarishness, while never letting you forget that there is nothing even remotely heightened about it. Even if you’ve seen “Schindler’s List” or “Shoah,” this filmmaker makes you feel as if you’re bearing witness to those unprecedented atrocities, and thus makes sure that you’ll never, ever forget what happened. [Read our review]

9. “Brooklyn”

Brimming with charm, John Crowley’s “Brooklyn” is an earnestly sweet tale that never feels cloying or manipulative. It’s an old-school story told in an old-school way: Saoirse Ronan plays Eilis, a young Irish woman who leaves her small town for New York, where she finds a new home and a new love with an Italian man (a sigh-inducing Emory Cohen) in her new neighborhood. “Brooklyn” is simple, never deviating from its central characters or introducing obstacles into their path for obstacles’ sake. The wide range of emotions felt by Ronan’s Eilis feels earned within the film, and the actress’s blue eyes clearly communicate each of her thoughts. She has previously wowed us in films like “Hanna” and “Atonement,” but her work here feels like a new level of adult achievement. Shot by Yves Bélanger, it’s a golden look at 1950s Ireland and New York City, filled with François Séguin’s perfect production design and Odile Dicks-Mireaux’s gorgeous costumes. But the film isn’t all sweetness and light; Eilis’s early days in New York are dominated by loneliness and isolation, and the event that sends her back to Ireland sent us into tears. However, it’s impossible to leave “Brooklyn” feeling anything but joy, as well as the desire to immediately see it again. [Read our review]

Tom McCarthy has been producing relatively solid dramedies for a handful of years. But this year, we got a peek at a couple of new sides of the director. The first was the godawful Adam Sandler fiasco “The Cobbler” (which occupies a spot on our Worst Of The Year list). But the second was this incredibly sure-footed and rigorous take on the Boston Globe team that broke the news of the sexual abuse scandal and cover up in the early aughts. McCarthy snagged an impressive cast for the gig (Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo, Rachel McAdams, Liev Schreiber), all of whom are in top form and none of whom dominate the film, which is just how it should be. “Spotlight” is the definition of an ensemble film —it’s a story of teamwork and trust and one of the finest depictions of journalism since “All The President’s Men” (a connection that has been made repeatedly, but happens to be true). Despite being as exacting as it is, “Spotlight” manages keep the plot moving and maintains some of the sharpest tension of the year. It’s a film of moral quandaries and ethical obligations, where the city of Boston stands as one of the most compelling characters. It’s easy to imagine “Spotlight” in the hands of a different director, prone to overstuffing the film with melodrama and exploitation of this tragedy. Fortunately, we got McCarthy’s: it’s a deeply affecting, satisfying film and an impressive technical achievement. [Read our review]

7. “Room”Nothing about director Lenny Abrahamson‘s previous work could have prepared us for the emotionally visceral gut punch of “Room.” Based on a best-selling novel by Emma Donoghue, who also adapted her book for the screen, this picture is about Jack (Jacob Tremblay), a loving, energetic, and imaginative 5-year-old boy who spent his entire life imprisoned in a ten-feet-by-ten-feet room with his mother (Brie Larson). In order to raise Jack in this horrific environment with any semblance of normalcy, Ma makes him believe that the room is the only place that exists in the world and that all the people and places he sees on TV are in a different galaxy. All of the information we get about Ma and Jack’s predicament builds up to one of the most pulse-pounding, nail-biting, any other review buzzword cliché-generating sequences we’ve seen in a long time. Even though the thriller elements are laid to rest about halfway through "Room," there’s still a tremendously engaging emotional journey ahead, where Abrahamson smartly avoids every trap for conventional melodramatics that the basic story elements would seem to lay out for him. The performances from everyone involved are extraordinary, especially for a story that’s ripe for hysterical dramatics. Tremblay carries the entire emotional weight of the picture with an exceptional display of natural empathy and energy, and Larson’s more than his match. The premise suggested a film that could have been almost impossibly bleak if Abrahamson put a foot wrong: instead, it’s deeply human. [Read our review]

The last few sequel-heavy years aside, Pixar has built up such a reputation for brilliance that when the studio makes a film deemed only ‘pretty good,’ as with the currently-in-theaters “The Good Dinosaur,” you can feel disproportionately disappointed. But that certainly wasn’t the reaction to "Inside Out," released earlier this year and which is certainly Pixar’s most ambitious film and easily one of its best. Set inside the head of young Riley, whose emotional turmoil after moving to San Francisco sends the personifications of Joy (Amy Poehler) and Sadness (Phyllis Smith) into the deepest recesses of her mind, it’s a remarkably mature yet accessible look at what makes us tick and which grapples with an elusive truth —sadness isn’t just unavoidable, it’s necessary— that so-called grown-up movies would cross the street to avoid. But this being from Pixar, and in particular from “Up” director Pete Docter, it’s also a total, well, joy —bright, exciting, funny (was anything funnier this year than the film’s closing credits? Or the gum commercial? Or the ‘abstract thought’ section? or (repeats ad infinitum)… "Inside Out" is fleet-footed, light of touch, beautifully voiced and impossibly touching. The bar’s been raised once again. [Read our review]

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5. “45 Years”

Between his tremendous breakthrough with “Weekend” and his gorgeous work helming much of HBO series “Looking,” we’ve had our eyes on British director Andrew Haigh for a while. But no one was prepared for “45 Years,” a serious step up for the director and one of the very best relationship movies in a very long time. The film focuses on the run-up to the titular wedding anniversary of an elderly, seemingly happy married couple (Charlotte Rampling and Tom Courtenay), and the fractures that appear when the body of his ex-girlfriend, who died in a mountaineering accident and has been frozen in the ice for half a century, is discovered. It’s perhaps a contrived set-up (based on David Constantine’s short story), but that’s the last thing in Haigh’s film that’s anything less than utterly truthful, particularly when it comes to performances from the two leads that come close to being the best roles of their 50 year careers. European in style without being austere (it’s a textured, tendered film, even funny in places), beautifully lensed throughout, it’s perhaps above and beyond anything else a ghost story about how the past can haunt and change us long after the fact, how time shifts and changes us, and how unearthed secrets can make you reevaluate everything in your life. [Read our review]

4. “Carol”

Given the commensurate lack of buzz, it’s possible you missed the boat on the exquisite-ness of Todd Haynes’ superb HBO mini-series “Mildred Pierce.” But lets not be nags: everyone’s on board the Haynes train this year, and that’s just gravy for all of us. Haynes’ delicate, nearly-note-perfect “Carol” is a swooning, romantic picture that makes you feel the grace notes of trembling desire in between words and between the eventually requited kisses and passionate moments. It is a movie about the unspoken moments of desire, the subtle gestures, the furtive glances, and the batted-eyelashes we have to decode when falling in love, but are too deep in a place of vulnerability to play our hand. Immaculately crafted, tremendously acted and rendered with consummate care and control, “Carol” is about the inexpressible, and the aching yearns of early, unformed loves and all the fragility it entails. It’s a directing masterclass, its two leads Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara deliver tour-de-force performances of restraint, and its score and cinematography (by Carter Burwell and Ed Lachman respectively) gorgeously underscore all the pangs of implicit heartache with musical dolor and frosty visual reflection. With this impeccably made movie, Haynes, perhaps belatedly, is crystallized as one of America’s greatest living directors. [Read our review]

3. “The Duke Of Burgundy”

Nothing in our poll of contributor voting surprised us as much as the strength of support for “The Duke Of Burgundy.” We figured it might make the list somewhere, given our rave review, but we didn’t imagine that an experimental art film about a sadomasochistic couple would appear on more lists than any film bar our winner, much less make the final top three. But then again, it is fucking brilliant. A significant step up for director Peter Strickland even from his excellent last movie “Berberian Sound Studio,” it is, like three of our top five, a relationship movie, in this case set in a world seemingly without men and focusing on the relationship between Evelyn (Chiarra D’Anna) and Cynthia (Sidse Babett Knudsen), two lepidopterologists (scientists studying butterflies) who are deeply in love but are increasingly strained by Evelyn’s highly submissive sexual tastes. Which might make it sound intimidating and unrelatable, but one of the film’s many pleasures is the way that it makes a seemingly extreme situation utterly relatable and deeply moving. Strip away its gorgeous design and more expressionistic elements, and you’ll find a deceptively sly, sexy and playful picture, an impossibly tender love story beautifully performed by its two leads, and which tackles universal truths in the most specific way imaginable. [Read our review]

2. “Sicario”

Denis Villeneuve cements his status as one of the most exciting working filmmakers with his furious, visceral thriller “Sicario.” Following the grim one-two punch of his gloomy, arresting “Prisoners” and his whatsit of a doppelganger flick “Enemy,” “Sicario” emerges as Villeneuve’s most assured and distressing work to date. A tale of inexorable moral compromise unfolding along the godless Cartel city of Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, “Sicario” is ultimately the story of Kate Mercer, a driven and resolutely unsentimental FBI agent who finds herself repeatedly thwarted by her male superiors when she agrees to enter this Southwestern heart of darkness. Villeneuve has an almost eerie ability to stage set pieces of prolonged, heart-stopping tension —as he does in a bullet-ridden showdown set at the U.S./Mexico border— and his work here with Roger Deakins, who also gave “Prisoners” its dark, glistening patina, is some of the best work either has ever done. Emily Blunt is a force of raw, elemental pain as Kate, Josh Brolin is wonderfully slimy as her annoyingly laid-back supervisor, and rising star Jon Bernthal has a scene with Kate in a motel room that ranks as one of the most terrifying we’ve seen all year. But it’s Benicio del Toro, as a man whose soul is all but a bygone thing, who quietly steals the show here. His Alejandro is a man of no allegiances, who, with his pointed goatee and predatory body movements, appears to be more wolf than man. “Sicario” follows Alejandro’s grim, precise footsteps: it’s coiled like a snake, with a bite just as deadly. [Read our review]

The Playlist’s 2015 pick for the best film of 2015 didn’t dominate to the extent that “Under The Skin” did last year, but from very early on in the voting process, it was clear what was going to come top. And what else could it be? Uniting everyone from highbrow cinephiles to explosion-happy genre fans (the film featured on all but two of the seventeen lists submitted), George Miller’s fourth movie in his post-apocalyptic franchise was an absolute wonder, literally the best action movie in decades, and a classic even before the title character (Tom Hardy) has had his mask removed. Stripping down to the absolute basics —it’s a chase movie in the same way that Buster Keaton’s “The General” is a chase movie— barely ever stopping to catch a breath while building a fascinating world through side-details and establishing complex characters through action, the director gifted us all with an adrenaline shot of pure, unfiltered cinema. One that returned grace and beauty to the summer blockbuster. One that wasn’t afraid to get weird, like the blue-tinged section in the mudlands that feels almost like a Tarkovsky movie. One that stealthily put a woman at the heart of a testosterone-filled, gas-guzzling actioner. One crafted at a level that suggested that 95% of movies simply aren’t trying hard enough. Miller’s already started talking about potential further ‘Max’ movies, but there’s part of us that wants him to let it alone, because returning with something as utterly perfect as “Fury Road” is a big, big task. [Read our review]

Not all staffers had seen “The Revenant,” “Joy” and “The Hateful Eight” by the time voting closed, but only Inarritu’s film registered on one poll of those that had, suggesting they might not have made the cut if they had (it’s worth noting that other late-year openers like “Anomalisa” and “45 Years” did, while last year films like “Selma” and “A Most Violent Year,” which also hadn’t been widely screened yet, cracked the Top 20). We have all seen “Star Wars,” and we all hated it. Joke!

i’ve only seen 12 of your 20, but overall it seems to be a good list. i would rank "spotlight" closer to the top. of all of them, "the end of the tour" is the 2015 film i’m likely to remember 20 years from now.

I’ve seen a lot of people in various places defending 2015’s film slate. Although I haven’t seen four or five big films that haven’t opened yet, the year (so far) is likely my least favorite of the century so far. That being said, there are a handful of movies I really liked. Typically, even in an "off year," I can put together a top 10 of movies I really liked – which is to say that, no, cinema isn’t dead.

I’ve seen some of your honorable mentions in 2014 and won’t include them on my own Top 20, but I have to say that Wild Tales, Timbuktu, Clouds of Sils Maria, What We Do in the Shadows and Phoenix are all great films, worthy of a mention regardless of when they were released.

Yes, the 100 Grand statement was really dumb. ("Hey Mom, I write for a Blog on the Interwebs. I’m someone. I now get to make Vapid, Lofty Statements & proclamations cause as we all know, if it’s online well, it’s something all right." PS -"I’ll bring the pie for Xmas" "This year I can afford it"…Little Jimmy)
But you have to remember – this is from the same "Staff" who put JOBS on the best of 2015 list. If ever there was a Movie that din’t need to be made, it was Jobs. Maybe even more so than BURNT. Geez.

Actually, my top ten would be very similar to The Playlist’s, which is kind of an anomaly. Fantastic write-ups! Thrilled by your Sicario love – it’s a monumental movie that will be appreciated properly down the road.

Being UK based, still anticipating the release of Creed and Bone Tomahawk. However buy favourite 2015 movie so far was Sicario. Looking forward to watching it again on the small screen. Mad Max: Fury Road for me simply never delivered. Visually stunning, but empty on emotional content. 2016 is already looking to be a more rewarding year for cinema.

It’s hard to believe that the Brian Wilson biopic Love&Mercy didn’t even rate an honorable mention. An extraordinarily difficult approach to the subject matter that was amazingly almost completely successful.

I don’t understand how you can call the characters in Mad Max complicated? What exactly is the big deal about this film? It’s exciting as long as it doesn’t stop. But every moment where the action stopped is so dull and stupid. This movie has no real subtext. It’s really superficial to proclaim Mad Max ‘the best film of 2015’.

Delroy, I know, it’s getting so impossibly hard to be a straight, able-bodied white male these days, isn’t? We’re being oppressed almost to the point of extinction, and to have critics raving about films not having us as the centre of attention is the final ignominy.Hopefully Lord Trump will set everything straight.

Of the movies I’ve seen, it’s been a strong year, especially considering all the acclaimed movies I still haven’t seen. Most of favorites made this list or the honorable mentions, and my favorite was #1. Satisfied.

My only disagreements are The Tribe (good but overrated, but certainly memorable so not a big complaint) and Inside Out (liked it, didn’t love it, not the Pixar masterpiece everyone else seemed to see – it’d make the bottom half of my Pixar ranking).

given it was a poll vote of a lot of random people that dont work together, many of whom havent even met and no consensus — "how do we feel about the poll data tally?" — how does it become box ticking thing? that would need further discussion, conversation, debate, etc., none of which actually happened, let me assure you.

Please more people share their top 20 lists. I’m trying to go aggregate like Nate Silver Also please more white dudes express their feelings. Also best way to make a 100,000 is to flip houses. Your Welcome

Creed? Really? another rocky movie? I still think the first was the best and all the rest are just the same story over and over again how can that be good? Oh I guess you did not see the first. I can still remember when my dad took me to see the first it was hot and the air conditioning was not working but 1/4 way through i had forgot about anything we cheered we cried it was awesome.
I am with the others as well, put me on the short list for that extra $100,000 and i too will make a movie for you.

Pretty good list! Pretty rad to see ‘Duke of Burgundy’ at #3, it made my top 20.
For a simplified reaction here is my top 10:
10. Carol
9. The End of the Tour
8. The Walk
7. The Hateful Eight
6. Sicario
5. The Force Awakens
4. Steve Jobs
3. Inside Out
2. Ex Machina
1. The Revenant

Moreover, this structure is not exciting tension, as in ‘Hostel’ was the case, but rather boring, amateurish and acted; particularly by pop idol Sky Ferreira who plays the best friend of Justine and her remark ‘activism is so gay "seems to express the attitude of Roth.
Fortunately, the patience of the horror fan is indeed rewarded once ‘our friends’ with their plane crashing into the jungle. It quickly becomes one of the group picked out and made part of the daily menu. The top chef of the cannibals, an old woman with scary eyes, puts it on a large stone, subject to loud cheers from the village members, beginning with her ritual slaughter. Without anesthesia course. They go to work systematically, and of course it is as fine as the victim is long in life. Maybe the meat tastes differently or less well. In any case, one for his eyeballs, tongue, limbs, torso, and head stripped of the rest of his body, with an awl or well-sharpened machete. While watching the other Western benefactors in their cage cartoonenter.blogspot.in

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Excellent list. I may have changed the order a bit, but not too much. There is one movie that I loved (seen it 8 times) that I don’t believe is on anyone’s list. The movie I’m referring to is Everest. For mountain climbing wanna bees this was as close to the actual event as we are going to get. I know that the dialogue leaves a lot to be desired but it wasn’t a story that needed a dramatic script. The story itself was enough. Kormakur did a fantastic job of making the climbing scenes appearing authentic. Jason Clarke was perfect for the role as was one of the best Jake Gyllenhaal. I love it. I really do.